(EXPANDED FROM 10/31/2022)
The automotive media tends to treat orphaned American brands with extra enthusiastic pom-pom waving. An example of the genre is Mark J. McCourt’s (2020) Hemmings article about Oldsmobile. He breathlessly insisted that the brand “revolutionized the industry.”
It’s true that Oldsmobile had been a leader in technological advancements such as high-compression V8s, turbocharged engines and front-wheel drive. In addition, Indie Auto commentator Kevin Faber pointed to Olds offering the first mass-produced car, the curved-dash Runabout (go here).
That ain’t nothing, but the list was still rather modest for a century-old brand. Particularly after the 1960s, only a public-relations flack could argue with a straight face that Olds was Detroit’s answer to European automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Citroen or Saab.
To be fair, Oldsmobile’s biggest constraint was being part of General Motors. As top management gradually reduced divisional autonomy beginning in the 1960s, Oldsmobile was increasingly stuck with what was available in the corporate parts bin. This resulted in products that tended to be only slightly different from other GM brands. And even the biggest innovations pioneered by Olds ended up being shared with its corporate siblings.
Front-wheel-drive Toronado fails to transform industry
Oldsmobile could have revolutionized the U.S. auto industry in 1966 when it introduced front-wheel drive. That technology would result in some of the biggest packaging improvements in the 20th Century.
Alas, Olds only used the drivetrain on the Toronado. Applying this technology to a big personal coupe wasted the most significant advantage of front-wheel drive — extra space efficiency. These coupes were sold mostly on their styling.
Imagine if Oldsmobile had instead given front-wheel drive to its mid-sized or big family cars. The top-of-line Ninety-Eight should have been pricey enough to cover the additional cost of front-wheel drive, particularly if it was shared with one of its corporate siblings such as the Buick Electra.
GM’s top management apparently assumed that most people didn’t care about practical considerations such as space efficiency. Even John Z. DeLorean failed in his quest to downsize Pontiac’s big cars in the early-1970s (go here for further discussion).
That attitude slowed GM’s response to rising import sales in the 1970s. It wasn’t until 1980 when front-wheel drive was finally used on lower-priced cars when the infamous X-body was introduced.
But back to the 1966 Toronado. Even if you agree with Motor Trend (2005) that it was “not only the car of the year but perhaps car of the decade,” Oldsmobile had to quickly share its new technology in order to please GM’s bean counters.
Imports were more technologically advanced
McCourt (2020) all but gushed that Olds “epitomized technological advances that defined the automobile industry when they first occurred.” I assume he was referring only to U.S. automakers, who fell behind imports in the post-war era.
Let’s discuss further the original Toronado since it was arguably Oldsmobile’s single most most innovative car. Despite its sporty styling the car didn’t compete with the roadworthiness of a Mercedes-Benz. In contrast, the Toronado’s brakes were notoriously weak (Lassa, 2005).
The Toronado was primarily a styling exercise. This was typical for GM in the 1960s — and as its divisions lost the ability to innovate from an engineering standpoint they increasingly relied on stylistic and marketing differences.
I would argue that Oldsmobile ultimately died because it had become just another cereal with different packaging.
Oldsmobile illustrates GM’s long, slow decline
With trumpets blaring, McCourt (2020) grandly concluded that “Oldsmobile is gone but will be venerated forever. Its legacy is too long, deep and fascinating to allow any other outcome.”
That’s one way to look at it. Another way is to suggest that the brand’s mostly unremarkable history reflects the long, slow decline of GM.
If that sounds unduly harsh to you, then let’s do a quick mental exercise: After the 1966 Toronado what groundbreaking car did Oldsmobile come out with? I don’t see a whole lot of there there. By 1979 Oldsmobile’s lineup had relatively modest stylistic and engineering differences from Buick’s.
The moral to this story is that there is a point where it didn’t matter whether Oldsmobile had innovative thinkers such as John Beltz. GM’s increasingly centralized management strangled the potential for deviating from the automaker’s standard approach to designing, building, selling and servicing its products.
One irony is that the Saturn brand was supposed to unleash a new level of innovation that arguably could have come from Oldsmobile . . . at least when it had more autonomy. Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye wrote that Saturn would be “more than a car and more than a concept in advanced manufacturing” — it would be a “company, separately incorporated, a ‘learning center for new ideas'” (1986, p. 393; original italics).
The creation of Saturn was a tacit acknowledgement that GM’s consolidation efforts had gone too far. For example, a 1984 reorganization made Oldsmobile a sales and marketing division (Oldsmobile Club of America, 2024). That apparently limited the brand’s ability to implement Saturn-style reforms in the design and assembly of its cars.
This goes a long way toward explaining why Oldsmobile lost steam to the point where it was discontinued in 2004. From the early-90s onward the brand had little to distinguish itself besides styling exercises such as the 1995-99 Aurora.
If anything, Oldsmobile was a cautionary tale of what happens when an automaker milks dry the reputation of a car line by fixating on “brand management” instead of real innovation. The bean counters and micro-managers of GM turned Oldsmobile into an empty shell.
Why can’t auto history writers put down their pom-poms long enough to acknowledge that?
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on June 19, 2020, updated on Oct. 31, 2022 and expanded on Dec. 17, 2024.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2024. “1977 Oldsmobile Toronado XSR Coupe.” How Stuff Works. Accessed Dec. 17.
- Langworth, Richard M. and Jan P. Norbye;; 1986. The Complete History of General Motors 1908-1986. Publications International, Skokie, IL.
- Lassa, Todd; 2005. “Drive: 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.” Motor Trend. Posted Aug. 10.
- McCourt, Mark J.; 2020. “An ode to Oldsmobile and its cars that revolutionized the industry.” Hemmings. Posted June 17.
- NY.
- Motor Trend; 2005. “From the Archives: Motor Trend Award to the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.” Posted June 24.
- Oldsmobile Club of America; 2024. “History of Oldsmobile.” Accessed Dec. 17.
- Wikipedia; 2022. “Oldsmobile Aurora.” Page last modified Sept. 4.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Oldsmobile (1969, 1971, 1977)
“Oldsmobile did not revolutionize the car industry.” Being the first truly mass-produced car counts, IMO, & the Runabout (commonly the Curved-Dash) did that, before Ford perfected it with the T. (You might argue for Duryea doing it, too, so you might ultimately be right.)
“Fair enough, but the list was rather modest for a century-old brand. Only a public-relations flack could argue with a straight face that Olds was Detroit’s answer to Mercedes-Benz, Citroen or Saab.”
Steve… I beg your pardon for deviating from the topic of this article (which I mostly agree with, BTW), but could you please specify what did Saab do to earn this “honorable mention” as, presumably, an innovative car brand ? Other than – you know – getting its hands on German Auto Union / DKW technology, like front-wheel drive, two stroke engines and streamlining right after the war, that is ?..
I assume Saab has put some serious effort into establishing an image of a “forward-thinking” company in the US market, which apparently affects your judgement about it; but, objectively speaking, in 1950s & 1960s it was roughly on the same technological level as the much-derided East German cars – namely the IFA Wartburg and, to a lesser extent, the Sachsenring Trabant – which were the more direct descendants of the DKW.
It may be just my opinion, but it seems that the rest of Saab story was mostly about decent PR & US market’s lack of familiarity with European cars, giving almost anything that was not some bog-standard front-engine, rear-drive econobox some kind of futuristic vibe.
And when two-stroke finally became passe, West Germany’s Ford was there to help with its four-stroke V4, because apparently Saab couldn’t even develop a modern engine in-house. Just as IFA couldn’t make one without some help from another West German car maker, the VW – what a profound coincidence. Nevertheless, just as you’ve established in one of your articles – Saab ultimately failed in creating a worthy successor for its aging 96.
Mind you, I an not a Saab hater; you can count me as a fan of the 96, which are cool cars with funky styling & quite decent road manners. But, then again – just as DKWs & Wartburgs 311/312/313/353 are cool cars in their own right; and probably better than the 2-stroke Saabs from the practical point of view.
I suppose it comes down to how you view automotive innovation. For starters, I’m assessing Saab through the lens of the American car market (e.g., I don’t have enough background to weigh in on Saab’s standing in Europe). I’m also not necessarily focused on who introduced what first, but rather who made a more lasting impression. In addition, I don’t just look at individual features but also the basic worldview of an automaker.
My sense is that Saab in its better days was one of the quirkiest automakers selling cars in the United States. If in the late-60s you took a typical GM designer, engineer or pretty much any other type of staff member, you couldn’t plop them into Saab’s operations without their heads exploding. The context would be too different.
I would say that Oldsmobile set the template for the standard American car from 1949 through roughly 1984 when it rolled out the fully automatic transmission (Hydramatic) in 1940, followed by the high-compression ohv V-8 in 1949. Mainstream American cars followed that basic formula for several decades.
By the mid-1980s, the Accord and Taurus had moved to the forefront, and as the rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame passenger cars powered by a V-8 faded, Oldsmobile faded with them.
In the car business, revolutionary moves aren’t limited technological advancements. Marketing and divisional structure also count. Ford changed the industry by bringing out the four-seat Thunderbird in 1958, and not because it was the first personal luxury car. That Thunderbird was fairly expensive for its time, and based on the principles of the Sloan Brand Ladder, it should have been either a top-of-the-line Mercury or smaller Lincoln. Instead, it was successfully sold as a Ford…which, in retrospect, signaled the beginning of the end of the then-dominant Sloan model. The 1965 LTD was another milestone in that regard.
Today, buyers can visit their Ford, Toyota, Chevrolet, Mercedes-Benz or VW dealer and choose from a wide variety of vehicles in different price classes. A Maverick XLT, Mustang GT and F-150 Platinum are Fords, but they each send very different messages regarding the buyer’s income level and aspirations. Fords tended not to be very technically adventurous, but the company did change the way we looked at brands and what line-up a mainstream brand needs to offer to stay competitive. Which ultimately spelled the end of the old medium-price marques.
The problem began with the 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 / 1959 Galaxie and the 1958 Chevrolet Impala. Had each of those cars stayed on a 115-inch wheelbase, then the deluxe interior would have likely been paired with a 300-h.p. top engine and the Sloan brand-hierarchy preserved. By extending the wheelbases and horsepower into the middle-price range cars (Pontiac-Oldsmobile-Buick Special-Edsel-Mercury-Dodge), everybody’s brands overlapped. Never thought about the Thunderbird being a Mercury, which might have driven more people into Mercury dealerships, especially when in 1958 it became a four-seater. I think the Corvette could stay a Chevrolet, but only if it remained an evolved Chevrolet like a C-7. The C-8 Corvette is its own brand of car, in my opinion. Every major automotive brand has diluted its image and identity, except for Bentley, Rolls-Royce and Porsche (sports cars only). (I exclude Ferrari and Lamborghini, because they are essentially hand-built specialty cars that are limited to specific low production.) The end of the line for General Motors’ Sloan hierarchy of brands was when the Oldsmobile Cutlass outsold the Chevrolet division (except for trucks) for the # 1 Car in 1986, then it all fell apart quickly.
The curved dash (Runabout) model, the introduction of the assembly line, the high compression V8 engine and the development of the fully automatic transmission are the touchstones of Oldsmobile’s innovations. However, after about 1950, what happened? Had GM engineering and marketing tied the brand so closely to it’s position on the Sloan ladder that it became fat and morose?
Oldsmobile had largely conventional body-on-frame, front-engine, rear wheel-drive cars that fit within the orthodoxy of the US market throughout most of the mid-20th Century. However, engineering and efficiency had dramatically improved starting in the 70’s and 80’s and these old-formula cars sold well until they didn’t.
Pre-WWII, Oldsmobile was an innovator. The intervening years and the GM corporate changes and missteps blunted that reputation and turned the division into a zombie of it’s once-innovative former self. The cars introduced since about the mid-1960’s did nothing to really enhance it’s reputation. I felt it was a shame to lose a nameplate that had been in continuous production since 1897, but the damage had been done.
Well-stated, George. GM was so flush with post-war profit and market dominance that they felt they could rest on their laurels forever. The Detroit bean counters have never cared about innovation, historical significance or anything that wasn’t about paying shareholders healthy dividends. They still don’t.
No, Oldsmobile – the brand – did not revolutionize the car industry. Such an accomplishment tended to be attributed to a company – Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and specific cars such as the Model T and VW Beetle.
GM on several occasions did use Oldsmobile to launch new technologies such as Hydramatic and (for GM) front-wheel drive, which the company then gave to Cadillac the following year. IN that sense, Oldsmobile served to work out bugs so that Cadillac’s image would not be tarnished. The high-compression OHV V8 for both brands launched at the same time, so perhaps GM was confident enough in those engines to let Cadillac have it from the get-go.
I think Oldsmobile’s biggest contributions were as an affordable, non-ostentatious entry point into the luxury space, and in styling – typically restrained, occasionally advanced as with 1935 cars and the Aurora. Throughout most of the 1950s, Oldsmobile was the most restrained of GM’s cars and therefore imho, the most enduring.
Regarding GM coasting in the Sixties and particularly the Seventies, I think it is important to keep in mind the many attributes that buyers attach importance to. Here’s a list that GM mostly tracks today, excluding those uniquely pertaining to EVs.
Price
Warranty/Cost of Repair/Serviceability
Quality/Reliability/Durability
Safety
Exterior Appearance
Interior Appearance
Visibility (including exterior lighting)
Fuel Capacity
Driving Range
Interior Quietness
Ride Comfort
Power and Acceleration
Overall Handling
Brake Effectiveness
Brake Feel
Gauges & Controls
Infotainment
Climate Control/HVAC
Cargo Capacity
Cargo Flexibility
Front Seat Comfort
Front Seat Spaciousness
Front Seat Ingress/Egress
Rear Seat Comfort
Rear Seat Spaciousness
Rear Seat Ingress/Egress
Third Row Comfort
Third Row Spaciousness
Third Row Ingress/Egress
All-Weather Traction
Off-Road Capability
Spare Tire Availability/Convenience
In the Sixties and Seventies the Big 3 were most focused on ride comfort, quietness and interior comfort, and GM’s 1977 large cars were the most quiet that I have ever experienced even to this day. The Big 3’s HVAC systems were also best-in-industry.
One can see from the list that the Europeans and Japanese companies in the Sixties and Seventies focused on other attributes. Today the entire industry must seriously addresses all the attributes, each company and brand balancing the many competing imperatives to create its own unique voice.